UnderstandingThe Subconscious Mind

Many professionals
in the field of psychology consider the use of the word
“subconscious” to be “quasi-scientific” and prefer to use the
term “unconscious.” It was Sigmund Freud who introduced the concept of
interpreting the thoughts within an “unconscious mind” through
techniques such as random association, dream analysis, and Freudian
slips.

On the other hand, to be unconscious is to
be in a comatose state, where the mind does not respond to environmental
stimuli. Rather than suggest an “unconscious mind,” which
nevertheless responds to the queries of the psychoanalyst, this article opts for the concept of a “subconscious mind,” which
responds to stimuli beneath conscious awareness. Subconscious
responses often enter conscious awareness.

Understanding the subconscious mind requires an overview of the principal pattern recognition processes operating in the nervous system. Beneath your awareness, neural drives remember and recognize patterns and act with logical precision. Those drives support your speech. They respond to your feelings, organize an idea, find the right words, arrange them in order, check grammar and operate your vocal chords. You are only conscious of the final outcome.

Most of the things you do are outputs of your subconscious drives. Even the emotional turmoil you experience is caused by internal drives triggered by emotions. Effective mind control depends on an understanding of the major neural drives within your subconscious mind.

Ann Graybiel recorded neural activity in the basal ganglia of a monkey, while it learned to associate the sound of a click with the availability of a sip of juice. With the start of activity in the throughput lines of the region, “spidery arms that eavesdropped” on the flow fired in rhythm, and learned the activity. Later, the region mirrored the firing rhythms, converting it into an act managed by a subconscious drive for the animal.

Organs in the brain, including the
basal ganglia and the cerebellum manage your life, while you worry
about the dinner menu.

Patter recognition links objectives to
tasks stored in memory. Your motor control system follows objectives
set by your will, or your emotions.

Early life links between emotions and
motor control. Vast memory stores add more links throughout life.

Major objectives set in childhood are
managed by drives.

Unpleasant feelings trigger
subconscious drives, which make your life miserable.

Drives, which manage subconscious
search processes are at the root of creativity.

Ongoing drives also burden you, when
you bear heavy responsibility.

Understanding
The Subconscious Mind - PET ScansScience
has clearly shown that complex intelligent activities can be managed
by your subconscious drives. In their research using PET scans on
subjects playing video games, scientists discovered that cortical
activity increases significantly when you first begin to learn a
skill. Such activity decreases when you master the pursuit. Your
conscious thoughts are correlated to cortical activity. The bulk of
your activities are learned and converted into habitual drives. Those
drives subconsciously manage your motor systems without your
awareness.

Understanding
The Subconscious Mind -Automated Motor ControlsYour
cerebellum is reported to support motor functions, using an accurate
biological clock. It is considered "necessary for smooth,
co-ordinated, effective movement." Its outputs are through rows
of Purkinje cells, which sent impulses to the motor neurons. Each of
those cells reportedly evaluate 2,50,000 parameters including which
opposing muscles contract, their levels of tension, on pressure,
stretching of skin and the beginning and end of muscle movements.
Your subconscious drives set objectives and your motor systems
interpret current sensory and motor data and act to achieve those
objectives.

Understanding
The Subconscious Mind -Decisions & ActionsYour
motor control systems have a galactic store of preprogrammed habitual
actions, finely tuned to meet specified objectives. Everything you do
has an objective. Your will, or your emotions, decide those
objectives and your motor systems select appropriate action to
achieve those goals. A television set recognizes the selected movie
channel (the drive objective) and delivers a preprogrammed set of
images, which enact your movie. A drive is a set objective, which
delivers the desired chain response. When you travel on a
transatlantic flight a single subconscious drive manages your trip.
Your conscious actions are limited to reading a few airport signs to
assist the current drive.

Understanding
The Subconscious Mind -Muscles Meet ObjectivesWhen
you decide to move a piece on a chess board, a specific drive takes
over. It controls the sequences of motor impulses, which persist from
the instant your hand picks up the piece, till it is set down in its
new position. Muscle movements are sequences of contractions, which
last just milliseconds. Each signal invokes only a tiny contraction.
Myriad muscles have to contract and relax over thousands of cycles
till your chess piece reaches its desired position. Interpreting the
drive, motor codes continually issue precise instructions to meet its
objective. Your hand does not wander off on its own. Drive systems
within your subconscious mind persistently iterate the objective till
it is achieved.

Understanding The Subconscious Mind -Emotions
Set Objectives

The
Hydra, the earliest animal, had a nerve net, which triggered
primitive drives, which enabled it to move about and absorb or reject
food particles. From those primeval origins, nature developed an
incredibly sophisticated range of emotions,
including fear, sadness, disgust, contempt, curiosity, surprise,
love, pleasure, embarrassment, guilt, and shame, which control the
finely differentiated activities of animals. Those emotions set the
objectives for the subconscious drives, which deliver appropriate
motor outputs.

Understanding
The Subconscious Mind -Emotions & Motor SystemsThe
memories of drives are assembled from the cradle, with the intense
activity of an infant triggered by inherited drives, which set off
its typical hand movements. Its basal ganglia records the emotion
signals of pleasure against the drive, which erratically touch an
object. When the object is seen again, its desire is converted into
the drive. The emotion recalls the drive pattern, which activates the
recorded hand movements. It purposefully touches the object. With
repeated play and experimentation, the child learns to move its hand
towards seen objects. In time, it learns to reach out and grasp a
pencil. As emotions increasingly control specific drives, the random
activities of the infant cease.

Understanding
The Subconscious Mind -Subconscious HabitsIt
requires your undivided attention, when you first learn to drive a
car. A conscious learning process links your motor drives to sensory
perceptions. The system stores those memories. Over the years,
millions more contextual memories are added. Shortcuts, early lane
changes, responses to traffic snarls. With experience, your drive
home requires little conscious thought. Ordinary people were unaware
of the drives, which tie their shoelaces, or slice a carrot. Such
drives remember and manage your myriad habitual subconscious
activities.

Understanding
The Subconscious Mind -Subconscious GoalsDetermined
by childhood longings and beliefs, the more enduring drives set your
career path. You do not consciously decide to follow your career
every morning. They are long term programs, established at a young
age. Those drives decide your daily routines persistently over
thousands of sleep and waking cycles. They are learned gradually from
infancy, forming sequences of physical activities, to be recalled
instantly - to flee, attack, or negotiate. Many such patterns are
learned in the playing fields, where habitual emotional responses
controlled personal relationships in the subconscious
mind.

Understanding
The Subconscious Mind -Complex DrivesProgrammed
drives manage sophisticated behavior from remembered responses. Birds
built nests driven by such programs. Drives enable the mind to meet
complex rules for a game and achieve objectives. Many drives are
inherited, making us shake with sobs in sadness or laugh loudly with
happiness. Emotions trigger the drives. Pleasant emotions generate
drives, which approach and accept. Unpleasant emotions generate
drives, which seek to escape, or reject the stimulus. Each moment of
your life, an intuitive
processselects
an emotion which activates appropriate drives in your subconscious
mind. That emotion immediately decides your current attitude to life.
You respond with pleasure, or withdraw from pain.

Understanding
The Subconscious Mind -The “Hurt” ComponentWhile
the pleasure drive approaches and accepts, pain triggers drives,
which seek to escape. The drives, which actively struggle to escape
pain are quite different from your sensation of pain. Medical texts
report that pain is felt in two waves, separated by an interval of a
few tenths of a second. The first sensation of pain is sharp and
localized. The second drive signals are disagreeable.
Those signals "hurt," because they trigger drives to
"escape" the situation. There are medical conditions, where
patients report that they feel pain, but it does not “hurt.” The
"escape" drive channel was cut through surgery - prefrontal
lobotomy. Effective mind control is about a level of self awareness,
which identifies the physiological sensations and so stills the more
troubling drives.

Understanding The Subconscious Mind -A Shopping List DriveDrives
manage the search processes in your mind. Just as precisely sequenced
motor impulses manage the slash of a surgical knife, programmed
drives search your memories, or superimpose one image on another in
your imagination. This process within the machine can be verified by
you. When you set out to write a shopping list, a persisting drive is
set off. Its objective is to discover the items in your list from
your memories. Those memories are stored in the context of your
needs, defined by your feelings. As you write each item down, drives
bring a new item into your short term memory.

Understanding
The Subconscious Mind -Creativity Of A MonkeyKonrad
Lorenz describes the creativity in the mind of a chimpanzee. The
animal was in a room which contained a banana suspended from the
ceiling just out of reach, and a box placed elsewhere. "The
matter gave him no peace, and he returned to it again. Then, suddenly
- and there is no other way to describe it - his previously gloomy
face 'lit up'. His eyes now moved from the banana to the empty space
beneath it on the ground, from this to the box, then back to the
space, and from there to the banana. The next moment he gave a cry of
joy, and somersaulted over to the box in sheer high spirits.
Completely assured of his success, he pushed the box below the
banana. No man watching him could doubt the existence of a genuine
'Aha' experience in anthropoid apes." Drives manage creativity
in your subconscious mind.

Understanding
The Subconscious Mind -Creativity Is Its ProductHuman
creativity is founded on search drives. The memories of a lifetime of
events are added to a galactic memory, storing knowledge inherited
across millions of years of evolution.

Drives
can superimpose one concept on another in memory to create a new
image in any imagined combination. Even a child can imagine a chair
with an attitude, or a refrigerator with a toothache.

By
interpolating millions of possibilities, your subconscious mind
arrives at new and original solutions. Creativity stands on the firm
foundation of a search drive, which manipulates a gargantuan
memory.

Understanding
The Subconscious Mind -The Search Drive BurdenMore
stress is a distinct possibility if you manage a large organization.
Any large enterprise has many problems, demanding solutions. Within
your subconscious mind, multiple drives persistently search for
solutions to endless issues. Unless managed, these drives persist,
recycling their searches, and repeatedly encountering frustrations.
Those frustrated searches create a turmoil of emotions, giving you no
peace. Persons, who retire from such responsibilities report a
feeling of a burden lifted off their shoulders the very next day!
Effective mind control requires an awarenessof
such drives in your subconscious mind. Systematic
planningand mindfulness
exercisescan
free you from the burdens of such drives.

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